An apology to oblivion.
Why We'll Never Have Children by Joshua Leseur
Probably the best article you'll read this week. It starts out like a lot of similar pieces, touching on the aggravating and dismissive litany of "You'll understand someday!" "I never knew what love was until I held my baby!" "Just you wait!" Welcome sentiments familiar to all of us who have decided that babies aren't for us, but hardly new, and hardly worthy of note.
Then it takes a turn right down the mineshaft and gets dark.
He talks about the pain of being mentally ill, in a family haunted by mental illness, and how that affected him and his choice not to have children . . . I really can't do it justice. It's just . . . I was the child he talks about not having. It . . . it hurts.
I present it less for the childfree aspect of it, and more for the mental illness aspect. Everyone should read this, parents and not parents and never parents, because it perfectly illustrates one of the less-talked-about reasons for not having children, and does it beautifully.
I don't want to get into any arguments about "How could you inflict a disease/mental illness/red hair on your child?!" That's completely missing the point, and that form of judgment is rarer but just as stinky as the whole "How could you deny your imaginary unborn children a chance at life?!" thing. I just want to point at something that strongly echoes what I and so many people like me feel. It's a personal thing, deeply personal, too personal to judge as right or wrong, to have any moral weight at all. It's a human thing. A very human thing. And, as such, it commands respect.
The last paragraph is a goodnight kiss and a knife in the ribs. Gave me the shivers.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:
Probably the best article you'll read this week. It starts out like a lot of similar pieces, touching on the aggravating and dismissive litany of "You'll understand someday!" "I never knew what love was until I held my baby!" "Just you wait!" Welcome sentiments familiar to all of us who have decided that babies aren't for us, but hardly new, and hardly worthy of note.
Then it takes a turn right down the mineshaft and gets dark.
He talks about the pain of being mentally ill, in a family haunted by mental illness, and how that affected him and his choice not to have children . . . I really can't do it justice. It's just . . . I was the child he talks about not having. It . . . it hurts.
I present it less for the childfree aspect of it, and more for the mental illness aspect. Everyone should read this, parents and not parents and never parents, because it perfectly illustrates one of the less-talked-about reasons for not having children, and does it beautifully.
I don't want to get into any arguments about "How could you inflict a disease/mental illness/red hair on your child?!" That's completely missing the point, and that form of judgment is rarer but just as stinky as the whole "How could you deny your imaginary unborn children a chance at life?!" thing. I just want to point at something that strongly echoes what I and so many people like me feel. It's a personal thing, deeply personal, too personal to judge as right or wrong, to have any moral weight at all. It's a human thing. A very human thing. And, as such, it commands respect.
The last paragraph is a goodnight kiss and a knife in the ribs. Gave me the shivers.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count: